Robert Glasper Experiment

'I feel like jazz needs a big-ass slap,' Robert Glasper told Downbeat magazine a few months ago, in one of those quotes that's likely to haunt him for the rest of his career. The pianist and producer administers just such a blow to the genre's buttocks on his new album, Black Radio, which enlists an impressive cast of urban musicians including Erykah Badu, Lupin Fiasco and Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def). Sadly, it doesn't appear that any of said guests will be present when Glasper brings his Experiment to Tokyo this month, though he's got himself a solid band in bassist Derrick Hodge, drummer Mark Colenburg and vocoder-wielding saxman Casey Benjamin.